SACVFD 51st Annual Spaghetti Dinner... Commerce City, CO

Thursday, December 8, 2011

I wanted to provide you with an update on Suncor's work related to the response we are managing in Sand Creek. We continue to make good progress to protect Sand Creek, despite the weather challenges including the snow and extremely cold conditions. Our priorities for the emergency response, as you know, were to safely contain the gasoline-like material and protect the waterway. That included boom deployment, building the dam to contain the leak, and constructing an interceptor trench as an added layer of protection for the waterway.
Currently, we continue to have booms in Sand Creek all the way down to the confluence with the South Platte River . The dammed area remains in place. The main task over this past weekend and the past few days has been to complete our interceptor trench between the isolation dam and the creek bank. We completed the interceptor trench this past Saturday.

Throughout this event, we have been working closely with both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) on the work and we will continue to do so to ensure our efforts and plans are aligned. The regulators continue to be pleased with our overall response efforts, coordination, planning and the results we're seeing, especially given the recent harsh weather conditions.

The next phase of work will include remediation of the dammed area. As this clean up continues in the area where the material has been isolated, we are also starting to investigate the nature and extent of the material migration, its path way and the ultimate source of the material.

We will continue to monitor the water conditions in Sand Creek so that we can respond to any changes we see; Suncor and CDPHE are conducting water sampling on the creek to measure the effectiveness of our ongoing isolation efforts. The EPA is expected to release new water samples soon. It's important to note that these sample results are always a few days behind the work that we're doing. This lag is important to consider when the media is reporting on our response and the water quality sampling results.

While this event is clearly disappointing for Suncor, our core values drive everything that we are doing and our values remain the same...we will continue to put the safety of our people, our neighbors and the environment first. And, Suncor will continue to be open and transparent about our activities and our business.

I want to personally thank all of Suncor's stakeholders and business partners who have reached out to us and supported us throughout this event. We do care about the environment, and we won't stop caring about it. Please let me know if you have any questions about the Sand Creek event and our response efforts.